The artists exhibiting here are Gyongy Laky, Mari Andrews, Clint Imboden, Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor, Sandra Ono, and Esther Traugot. Like many artists working today, they share an attraction to humble materials – wire, pruned twigs and branches, thread, stones, spent clothing and hacksaw blades, etc. But the deftness and expressive range employed here endow the resulting objects and installations with surprising beauty, meaning, and potency.
The title of the exhibit, “Making Special”, refers to a central idea from writer Ellen Dissanayake, about the significance of the act of art-making.1 This concept looks at art as a behavior rather than a product. She sees this behavior, of recognizing and/or conferring specialness, as part of a complex set of proclivities that have served humans over millennia to absolutely advance our survival and evolution.
These artists epitomize this for me. They share a practice of recognizing and collecting ordinary and discarded materials from our world. Then, through their individual processes of sorting and ordering these materials, they transform them into objects worthy of contemplation. While drawing on history, abstraction, and craftsmanship, as well as universal and cultural symbols, these artists are attending rigorously to their personal visions. Their art-making, and what they offer to the world, are vital parts of the continuum of that human impulse to “make special”.
Gina Telcocci, Curator